CQC: The Government’s heath watchdog has a “long way to travel” before
it is fit for purpose, an MP has warned.

Stephen Dorrell, the Conservative chairman of the Health Select Committee, said the Care Quality Commission (CQC) had come from a “long way behind” but must do more if patients are to have full confidence in its hospital inspections.

A damning report by MPs in the committee warned that the public does not trust the watchdog to tell them if care homes and hospitals are fit for purpose.

The MPs said that inspectors often tick boxes rather than really probe the care that is being offered.

The CQC, which has come in for a barrage of criticism in the last two years, needs to ensure its inspectors examine the culture of organisations that so often underpins the care provided, according to the committee’s annual report into the regulator.

Mr Dorrell said that the quality of inspections was patchy and there were too many instances when inspectors failed to be thorough enough.

The MP for Charnwood said it was “extraordinary” that the precise role of the CQC is still being discussed after five years.

“The CQC has existed for five years,” Mr Dorrell told the BBC's Radio 4 Today programme. “It’s extraordinary that we’re still discussing what its core responsibility [is]. That is regrettable.

“I’m confident that it’s changing. It is an organisation that has come from a long way behind and it has got a long way to travel.”

In the report Mr Dorrell warned that CQC inspectors pass "standards of care that are certainly too low”..

Such inspections “fail to identify examples of care which don’t meet the aspirations of the essential standards”, he said.

Chris Skidmore, another Conservative committee member, said that registration with the CQC was meant to be a “kitemark” the public could trust.

But he said: “That first hurdle seems too easy to jump over.”

The CQC has been frequently criticised recently for failing to identify poor care and even abuse.

It failed to heed the warnings of whistleblowers about routine abuse of people with learning disabilities at Winterbourne View care home near Bristol, with the matter only coming to light thanks to undercover BBC reporters.

The committee’s annual report found that the CQC still lacked focus, five years after being set up.

Its “essential standards” could not be taken “as a guarantee of acceptable standards in care”, the committee found.

“As a result, patients, residents and relatives do not have confidence in the CQC’s standards or the outcomes of inspections.”

Some have called for the CQC’s abolition, but Mr Dorrell said members felt that to ”throw all the cards up in the air and start again” would be unproductive.

The committee did note some improvements compared to a year ago, with “a much keener focus on patient safety” at the regulator, which has a new chief executive and a new chairman.

But Mr Dorrell said these improvements came from “a low base”.

The report noted: “There have been too many reports of CQC inspections which focus on easily measurable inputs, rather than the essential quality of care provided.

"The organisation has sometimes seemed to be an illustration of the principle that 'what gets measured gets managed'."

In the future, inspectors should “ask themselves about the culture of care within an organisation” and the CQC should make assessing this part of the formal inspection process.

When no staff reported problems that was not a sign of a perfect organisation, said Mr Dorrell, but one that was not open or transparent.

“It almost certainly it tells you that the culture is wrong,” he said.

David Behan, chief executive of the CQC, said the organisation will "focus on quality and safety".